New players, take this advice!

[Linkmain-maybe]

When you first start playing Smash, you may start gravitating to easy and projectile heavy characters. One of the most common is PAC-Man. While at top level play he is extremely complex, low-level and mid-level play is generally a lot simpler. He is also a debatable top-tier. But, I feel new players should pick him up AFTER learning how to properly play. PAC-Man is a character that can easily teach new players tons of bad habits that generally only work with PAC-Man and are punished very easily by Mid-level players. He reinforces the idea that you should do the same thing all the time with little variation. A good example of this is using hydrant out of disadvantage. It works very well, but it doesnt teach the play how to play in disadvantage. Instead, they get used to being in mostly Neutral and Advantage. If the PAC-Man ever decides to branch out to other characters, they are going to be caught in a snag when in disadvantage. They won’t know how to make their drift ambiguous, they won’t know how to FF-AD, they wont understand how to fight juggling tools with large disjoints.

Another bad habit is how he teaches you to be constantly mashing. PAC-Man is gifted with great frame data on his normals, allowing him to press lots of buttons without the opponent being able to punish very effectively. However, this leads to the player not understanding how to space properly. It also leaves them without any clue on how to avoid getting hit by fast OOS options like G&W up-b. They will struggle to realize that rising aerials are less safe than falling aerials. Mashing is likely the worst habit they learn, as it leaks into every character they play as.

The last prominent habit is not respecting spotdodge. This is because PAC-Man has a grab that effectively beats spotdodge. This is the most simple and easy to fix habit, but it can still be very nasty. Like I have pointed out before, this is a very much beatable habit that can seriously impede the skill growth of the player.

I could explain lots of other bad habits he teaches, but I feel these are the most common that many players generally see.

A few characters that I would recommend to improve are Lucina, Link, Mario, Pit and Dark Pit, and Palutena. They are all mainly fundamental based characters that will prevent you from learning very bad character specific habit. If you would like forme to elaborate further, I will answer any question to the best of my ability

NOTE: I am NOT a top player. Do not take everything I say as truth, and if you feel I have made a mistake anywhere in this post, please point it out so I can do my best to rectify it.

 

[StrangeKitten]

This isn't the first example I've heard of a character that can potentially cause bad habits for beginners. I have also heard that Yoshi is a bad choice for encouraging bad double jump habits and encouraging overuse of a very punishable down B.

I would recommend beginners to try improving with a few characters, preferably ones who are all different, so that they can begin to get a well-rounded sense of the game.

 

[Linkmain-maybe]

This isn't the first example I've heard of a character that can potentially cause bad habits for beginners. I have also heard that Yoshi is a bad choice for encouraging bad double jump habits and encouraging overuse of a very punishable down B.

I would recommend beginners to try improving with a few characters, preferably ones who are all different, so that they can begin to get a well-rounded sense of the game.

I actually think Hero is a good learning character since he isn’t very difficult at first, but gradually becomes harder, requiring precise spacing and good reads to play effectively. The random crits and down-b are less impactful than smart decision making IMO, and down b cant really be spammed.

 

[Linkmain-maybe]

This isn't the first example I've heard of a character that can potentially cause bad habits for beginners. I have also heard that Yoshi is a bad choice for encouraging bad double jump habits and encouraging overuse of a very punishable down B.

I would recommend beginners to try improving with a few characters, preferably ones who are all different, so that they can begin to get a well-rounded sense of the game.

Forgot to mention, Yoshi’s also learn to mash due to their high airspeed and drift as well as astounding frame data